The gathered crowd

A gathering crowd come together as night falls over the Mathare informal settlement in Nairobi, commuters and shoppers wandering in from nearby markets and bus stops. People take seats along the natural stone amphitheater of the Mabatini grounds, overlooking the inflated screen of the Slum Film Festival, awaiting an evening of film screenings. Taken during my ongoing PhD fieldwork on the relations between audiovisual production and humanitarian aid in Nairobi, this photo of the audience at Mathare goes some way to establishing the feeling of the scale of the open-air screening, through which people strolled and often settled, staying for several films or departing after only one, watching as much as chatting, distracted children running underfoot in a broken, public exhibition nestled within the messiness of everyday life.